One of my prized possessions is an old vinyl LP put out by the Smithsonian Institute as part of their Ethnic Folkways Library. The picture on the cover couldn't be more incongruous if they had tried; it shows a woman dressed in typical fashion for pre World War One middle class, a large Edison Roll player, and an elderly Indian man in full Plains Indian Regalia. The Healing Songs Of The American Indians were recorded in the field by Music Ethnomusicologist Dr Frances Densmore between the years of 1908 and 1927.
When she started out in 1908 ,she would have easily been working with men from the Sioux, Chippewa, Yuman, Ute, Papago, Makah, and Menominee nations who were remnants of the last non-reservation Indians; the last generation that knew a life other that of being at war or conquered. Whatever her reasons at the time for making these collections, they are now an incredibly valuable resource not just for non-natives, but natives too who are looking to find traces of the culture that less enlightened people tried to destroy after Dr. Densmore so steadfastly worked to preserve it.
But Dr. Densmore wasn't doing anything new, music anthropologists had been tracking down music and recording ever since Edison's wax rolls made it possible to record sound. It's one of the sadder commentaries on the nature of our society that there always seems to be something valuable on the verge of vanishing if it weren't for one or two people taking it upon themselves to do something about it.
In North and South Carolina you have the Music Maker Relief Fund not only recording the music but arranging the means to keep some of the original Blues artists alive and thriving with concert bookings and recording contracts. Document Records in England has been putting together hours and hours of programming tapes that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had devoted to early Jazz and Blues music. While in Chicago Delmark Records continually reaches back into its 55-years of archival recordings to find performers who otherwise would undeservedly be forgotten.
But when it comes to individual efforts there are few who can match the dedication of painter, folklorist, musician, and musicologist Art Rosenbaum who did his first field recordings among migrant workers in Michigan when he was a teenager in the 1950s and hasn't stopped since. Now the label Dust To Digital has taken on the task of compiling and releasing these miles of tape, whose quality ranges from mono to digital, in some sort of digestible format.
At some point in time Art's hobby began to be taken seriously and since he's become a painting instructor at the University of Georgia they have properly archived all his materials. It's been from these archives that Steven Ledbetter (I'd be interested in knowing if he was related to the late Hughie Ledbetter aka Leadbelly the blues singer) of Dust To Digital has pulled together the material for the first four cd set of Art Of Field Recording Volume 1: Fifty Years Of Traditional American Music
Along with the four discs, containing 110 tracks of music, is included a remarkable 96- page book with photographs of the various performers taken during their recording sessions, or sketches done by the artist of what it was like to record them if no photo was available. The photos were taken for the most part by Art's wife Margo, while all the illustrations are by Art himself. Art's drawings and illustrations are amazing for their attention to detail and the feeling of capturing a moment as it is happening; look at the picture in this review of him recording the Eller Brothers for a good example of that.
Article comments